Purnia home to newest kind of cyber fraud — cloning biometrics to clean bank accounts

Purnia in Bihar, once notorious for smuggling of narcotics and fake Indian currency notes (FICN), has now emerged as a hot spot of cyber fraud and a challenge for the police due to use of innovative ways to rob unsuspecting people of their money using their biometric data from registration papers.

The new ways of online swindling came to light after the Purnia police arrested 17 people and registered four separate FIRs with Kasba and Amaur police stations so far this year. A police officer said a new type of cyber fraud, in which miscreants manipulate fingerprints, had been detected between January and May this year.

“The arrested persons were involved in downloading the fingerprints, biometrics and Aadhaar numbers of buyers and sellers from the property registration documents of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Telangana governments,” said the officer.